Cleaning up a PC before Disposing of it

googler

Rockman wrote: »

Is it easy to remove the hard drive? Not sure how to do it.

Yes. There's guides all over the web and on YouTube showing you how.

If you can remove an electrical plug and turn a screwdriver, you can remove a hard drive.

tronator

googler wrote: »

All data is on the HDD (Hard Disk Drive)

Remove it and keep it. You can use it as a backup, a secondary, etc. It's the most secure way, and it's the quickest and easiest. There are guides all over the web on how to do it

Charities will still thank you for the rest of the thing, they'll just install an HDD and OS for themselves.

My local charity refuses to take old computers because of "data protection". How stup*d ...

poppellerant

The harddrive is normally easy to remove from a PC, it can be fiddly to access on some laptops, though - as you have a desktop, I wouldn't worry.

Depending on the age on the PC, it will either be a SATA or IDE or harddrive - IDE harddrives are found what are now considered ancient relics.



On the above image, the IDE harddrive is on the left and the SATA harddrive is on the right. You can easily spot IDE harddrives with the wide ribbon cable plugged into them.

All you have to do is remove either the IDE or SATA cable and power cable, then unscrew or unmount the harddrive and remove it.

I personally recommend buying a USB adaptor for the drive. Remove any needed data from it, format it, then use it as a backup drive for files such as photos or important files. Bear in mind that the harddrive is old, so only treat it as a backup drive - don't use it to remove files from your computer and store only on that harddrive!